by Thomas Mann
“What, not a one? Tant pis pour vous. Not prepared to do a lady a favor?” She pouted her lips and shrugged. “I’m disappointed. Gentlemen should at least be punctual and dependable. I was under the impression that you had sheets of them folded up and tucked away in a little pocket of your wallet, all arranged according to denomination.”
“No, why should I?” he said. “I never write letters. To whom, really? At most a postcard now and then, and they’re prestamped. To whom should I be writing letters? I have no feeling whatever for the flatlands anymore, I’ve lost that somehow. We had a folk song in school, that went, ‘The world is lost to me now.’ That’s how it is with me.”
“Well, then, at least give me a papyrosa, my lost young man,” she said, sitting down opposite him next to the stove, on a bench cushioned with a linen pillow. She crossed one leg over the other and held out her hand. “It seems you come equipped with those.” And without a word of thanks, she nonchalantly took a cigarette from the silver case he held out to her, then accepted a light from the pocket lighter he let flicker before her face as she leaned forward. There was a voluptuousness in this spoiled woman’s “do give me,” in the way she took without a word of thanks; but beyond that, there was also a sense of mutual human—or better, humane—interests, of sharing, of a naturalness, at once both savage and tender, in the act of giving and taking.
With the critical eye of a lover, he remarked on all this to himself. Then he said, “Yes, always have those. I always come equipped with those. One must have them. How would one possibly manage without them? That’s what people call a passion, I believe. I am, to be frank, not a passionate man, but I do have my passions, detached passions.”
“I find it terribly reassuring,” she said, letting the inhaled smoke pour back out, “to hear that you are not a passionate man. But, then, how could you be? That would be a degeneration of the species. Passion—means to live life for life’s sake. But I am well aware you Germans live it for the sake of experience. Passion means to forget oneself. But you do things in order to enrich yourselves. C’est ça. You haven’t the least notion how repulsively egoistic that is of you and that someday it may well make you the enemy of humankind.”
“Now, now! The enemy of humankind, just like that? That’s quite a generalization, Clavdia. Do you have anything in particular, anyone special in mind when you say we do not live for life but for enrichment? You women don’t usually moralize like that for no good reason. Ah, yes, morality. It’s one of the things Naphta and Settembrini argue about. It is part of the great general confusion. A man doesn’t really know whether he lives for his own sake or for life’s sake, and no one can tell him for sure which it is, either. I think the boundaries are rather fluid. There is both egoistic sacrifice and sacrificial egoism. I suppose that on the whole it’s the same with love. Of course, it’s probably immoral of me that I’m unable to pay much attention to what you’re saying about morality, since mainly I’m just happy that we’re sitting here together, just as we did one time before and never again, not once since you came back. And that I can tell you how absolutely perfect those narrow cuffs look at your wrists, and how I love the way light silk billows around your arms—arms I know well . . .”
“I’m leaving.”
“No, please, don’t go. I shall pay all due respect to circumstances and personalities.”
“One should at the least be able to count on that much from a man without passion.”
“There, you see—you mock me, Clavdia, you scold me, just because I—you’re going to leave, just because I . . .”
“If you wish to be understood, I would ask you to speak in a less fragmentary fashion.”
“And so I’m not to benefit, not the least little bit, from all your practice in guessing at fragments? That’s unfair—or at least I would say so if I weren’t well aware that it is not a matter of fairness.”
“Oh, no. Fairness is a detached passion. In contrast to jealousy, with which a detached person would simply make himself ridiculous.”
“You see? Ridiculous. So, then, allow me my detachment. I repeat: how could one possibly manage without it? For example, how could I have stood the waiting without it?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Waiting for you, Clavdia.”
“Voyons, mon ami. I will not dwell on the foolish stubbornness of your continuing to use my first name and informal pronouns. You are surely weary of my mentioning that by now—after all, I am not a prude, not some outraged bourgeois housewife.”
“No, you aren’t. Because you are ill. Illness gives you your freedom. It gives you a certain—wait, a word has just come to mind that I have never used before—it gives you a certain genius.”
“We shall speak of genius some other time. That is not what I wanted to say. I demand only one thing. You cannot pretend that I had anything to do with your waiting—if indeed you did wait—that I encouraged you to wait, or even gave you permission to do so. You will please acknowledge here and now that the opposite is the case.”
“Gladly, Clavdia, but of course. You did not ask me to wait, I waited quite on my own. I understand completely that it is a matter of importance to you—”
“There is something impertinent even in the way you concede the point. You are, on the whole, an impertinent person, God knows why. Not only in your dealings with me, but in general. Even your admiration, your deference is impertinent somehow. Don’t think I don’t notice. I should not even be talking to you, given your impudence, particularly not when you dare speak of waiting. It is irresponsible of you still to be here. You should have gone back to your work long before this, sur le chantier, or wherever it was.”
“And now there is no genius whatever about you. You are speaking quite conventionally, Clavdia. Those are phrases. You can’t mean that the way Settembrini does; but if not, how do you mean it? You said it just for something to say, I cannot take it seriously. I shall not undertake a wild departure, like my poor cousin, who died, just as you predicted he would, trying to do his duty in the flatlands, and who probably knew himself that he would die, but preferred that to continuing his rest-cure duties here. Fine, that’s why he was a soldier. But I am not, I am a civilian. For me it would be deserting the colors to do what he did, to go down to the flatlands at all costs, despite Rhadamanthus’s prohibition, and try to be of use and serve progress. That would be base ingratitude and the worst disloyalty to my illness and to genius and to my love for you, from which I bear both old scars and new wounds, and to those arms of yours, that I know well—though I must admit it was only in our dream, a dream with a touch of genius, that I came to know them, which certainly implies no consequences or duties for you, no limitations on your freedom.”
She laughed, the cigarette still in her mouth, and her Tartar eyes narrowed to slits; leaning back against the wainscoting and supporting herself on both sides with her hands, one leg still crossed over the other, she jiggled her foot in its patent leather shoe.
“Quelle générosité! Oh là, là, vraiment, it’s precisely the way I’ve always imagined an homme de génie, my poor little fellow.”
“Enough of that, Clavdia. I am certainly no homme de génie by birth, any more than I am a man of stature—good God, no. But purely by chance—let us call it chance—I have been forced upward into these regions where genius flourishes. In a word—though you probably are not aware that there is such a thing as alchemistic, hermetic pedagogy—an enhancement, a transubstantiation to something higher, if you understand what I mean. Naturally, the substance that is forced upward by the application of external influences must have a little something to it to begin with. And I know very well just what there was to me: I have been an intimate of sickness and death for a very long time, and even as a boy I borrowed a pencil from you, in the same irrational way I did again on that Mardi Gras night. But irrational love is a mark of genius, because death, you see, is the principle of genius, the res bina, the lapis philosophorum, and it is also the pedago
gic principle. For the love of death leads to the love of life and humanity. That is how it is. It came to me up on my balcony, and I am delighted to be able to tell it to you. There are two ways to life: the one is the regular, direct, and good way. The other is bad, it leads through death, and that is the way of genius.”
“You are a silly philosopher, Hans Castorp,” she said. “I can’t claim that I understand everything in that complicated German brain of yours, but what you say sounds humane, and no doubt you are a good young man. And one must admit, you behaved quite en philosophe.”
“All too en philosophe for your taste, Clavdia, is that it?”
“That’s enough impertinence—it gets to be a bore. For you to wait like that was stupid and quite impermissible. But you aren’t angry with me, are you, because you waited in vain?”
“Well, it was rather hard, Clavdia, even for a man with detached passions—hard on me and hard-hearted of you to come back with him, because of course you knew from Behrens that I was still here, waiting for you. But I’ve told you that I think of that night simply as a dream, our dream, and that I concede you have your freedom. After all, I did not really wait in vain, because you are here again, we are sitting next to one another just as then, I can hear the wonderful edge to your voice, so familiar to my ear for a very long time; and under that billowing silk are arms that I know well—though, granted, your traveling companion is lying upstairs in a fever, the great Peeperkorn, who gave you those pearls . . .”
“And with whom you are on such friendly terms, for your own enrichment.”
“Don’t hold it against me, Clavdia. Even Settembrini scolded me about it, but that’s simply conventional prejudice. The man is a godsend—good Lord, he’s a personality. He’s well on in years—but so what. I would still understand completely how as a woman you must feel immense love for him. And you do love him very much, don’t you?”
“All due deference to your philosophizing, my little German Hans,” she said, passing her hand through his hair, “but I would not consider it humane to speak to you about my love for him.”
“Ah, Clavdia, why not? I think humanity begins where people of no genius think it is already at an end. We can go ahead and talk about him. Do you love him passionately?”
She bent forward to toss the butt of her cigarette into the grate beside her, then sat back and crossed her arms. “He loves me,” she said, “and his love makes me proud and grateful and devoted to him. That’s something you can understand—or you’re unworthy of the friendship he has offered you. His feelings compel me to follow him and help him. How could I not? Judge for yourself. How could it be humanly possible to disregard his feelings?”
“Impossible,” Hans Castorp agreed. “No, it would be quite out of the question, of course. How could any woman ever bring herself to disregard his feelings, disregard his fear of the feeling of being left behind in Gethsemane, so to speak.”
“That’s not a stupid way to put it, Hans,” she said, and her slanted eyes grew fixed, lost in thought. “You understand. Fear of the feeling . . .”
“It doesn’t take much to understand that you have to follow him, even though—or perhaps precisely because—there must be something rather fearful about his love.”
“C’est exact . . . fearful. There are a lot of worries—you know, difficulties.” She had taken his hand now and was playing with his fingers without even noticing. Suddenly, however, she looked up with a frown and said, “Stop. Isn’t it rather shabby of us to speak about him this way?”
“Certainly not, Clavdia. No, not in the least. It’s really quite human, quite humane of us. You love that word, you draw it out and accent it with such enthusiasm. I’ve always enjoyed listening to you say it. My cousin Joachim did not like it, as a soldier, that is. He thought it implied a general weak-willed slovenliness, and in that sense, then, a boundless guazzabuglio of tolerance. And I have my own reservations about it, too, I grant you. But if it implies freedom and genius and kindness, then there really is something fine about it, and we can go right ahead and use it in our conversation about Peeperkorn and the difficulties and worries he causes you. They all stem from his penchant for honor, of course, from his fear that his feelings will fail him, the same fear that makes him love the classic gifts, the regalements, the way he does. We can speak of it with all due reverence, because everything about him has stature, the magnificent stature of a king, and we demean neither him nor ourselves when we speak about it humanely.”
“It has nothing to do with us,” she said. She had crossed her arms again. “One would not be a woman if one were unwilling to risk being demeaned for the sake of a man, a man of stature, as you put it, who regards one as the object of his feelings and his fears about feelings.”
“Most definitely, Clavdia. Very well put. Because, then, even being demeaned brings with it a certain stature, and a woman can look down from the heights of her demeaned position to those who have no royal stature, and speak in that disparaging tone you used just now when you asked about timbres-poste and said: ‘Gentlemen should at least be punctual and dependable.’ ”
“Are you so sensitive, Hans? Don’t be. To hell with sensitivities—agreed? I used to be sensitive at one time. I admit it, since we’re sitting here together this evening. I was annoyed by your detachment, and that you were on such good terms with him for the sake of your own egoistic experience. And yet I was delighted, too, even grateful to you, that you showed him such respect. There was a great deal of loyalty in your conduct. And even if it was mingled with some impertinence, I still had to give you credit for it in the end.”
“That was very kind of you.”
She looked at him. “It appears you are incorrigible. I will tell you straight out: you are a subtle young man. I don’t know whether you have any depth, but you definitely have subtlety. Which is a good thing, by the way—one can live with that. It can provide the basis for friendship. Shall we build a friendship, establish an alliance for someone, instead of against someone as is usual? Will you give me your hand on it? I am afraid . . . afraid sometimes of being alone with him, emotionally alone, tu sais. He can be frightening. I’m afraid sometimes that something may happen to him. It makes me shudder. I would love to have some good person on my side. Enfin, if you would like to hear it, perhaps that is why I came back here with him.”
They were sitting knee to knee, he tilted forward in his rocking chair, she on the bench. She had squeezed his hands as she spoke these last words directly into his face.
“To me? Oh, that is lovely,” he said. “Oh, Clavdia, that is quite extraordinary. You brought him to me? And you still want to claim my waiting was stupid and impermissible and quite in vain? It would be terribly gauche of me if I did not know how to value your offer of friendship, a friendship with you for his sake.”
And then she kissed him on the mouth. It was one of those Russian kisses, the sort that are exchanged in that vast, soulful land at high Christian feasts, as a token and seal of love. But even as we record this kiss exchanged between a notoriously “subtle” young man and a charming, slinking, and still equally young woman, we cannot help finding in it a reminder of Dr. Krokowski’s elaborate, if not always unobjectionable way of speaking about love in a gently irresolute sense, so that one was never quite sure whether he meant its sanctified or more passionate and fleshly forms. Are we doing the same thing here, or were Hans Castorp and Clavdia Chauchat doing the same thing with their Russian kiss? But what would be our readers’ reaction if we simply refused to get to the bottom of that question? In our opinion, it is analytically correct, although—to use Hans Castorp’s phrase—“terribly gauche” and downright life-denying, to make a “tidy” distinction between sanctity and passion in matters of love. What’s this about “tidy”? What’s this about gentle irresolution and ambiguity? Isn’t it grand, isn’t it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love—from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in a
mbiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life, the touchingly lustful embrace of what is destined to decay—caritas is assuredly found in the most admirable and most depraved passions. Irresolute? But in God’s good name, leave the meaning of love unresolved! Unresolved—that is life and humanity, and it would betray a dreary lack of subtlety to worry about it.
And so while Hans Castorp’s and Frau Chauchat’s lips meet in a Russian kiss, let us lower the lights in our little theater for a change of scene. For our concern now is the second of the two conversations we promised to disclose, and after relighting the scene—it is the soft illumination of a late spring afternoon, the thaw has begun—we discover our hero in his customary place beside the great Peeperkorn’s bed, deep in respectful, friendly conversation. After four o’clock tea in the dining hall—at which
Frau Chauchat had appeared alone, as she had at all three previous meals that day, and then set off at once for a shopping trip down in Platz—Hans Castorp had asked to be admitted for his usual sick call on the Dutchman, partly to show the old man some attention and entertain him a little, partly to be edified by his personality: in short, for reasons both life-affirming and irresolute. Peeperkorn laid his Telegraaf aside, tossed his horn-rimmed pince-nez atop it after slipping it by the bridge of his nose, and extended a captain’s hand to his visitor, while his broad, ragged lips stirred with a vague, but pained expression. Red wine and coffee were within reach as usual; the coffee things, splattered brown from recent use, stood on the chair beside the bed—Mynheer had taken his usual afternoon cup, strong and hot, with sugar and cream, and he was still in a sweat from it. His regal face, encircled by white flames, was flushed, and little beads of moisture stood out on his brow and upper lip.